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Palladium surface finishes are utilized on leadframes, printed wiring boards and automobile sensors. Their superior functional performance and the considerable environmental impact of plating lead‐free finishes for packaging processes have been increasingly recognized by the electronic industry. Wire bondable and solderable palladium finishes meet military and industrial standards at no extra cost in the overall assembly processes when compared to traditional packaging techniques. In addition to the development of palladium plating chemistries and technologies, the functional properties of the surface finishes including their wire bonding performance have also been investigated at Bell Laboratories. In this study, gold and aluminum wire bonding to palladium finishes was tested and the wire bond pull force and break position were examined in order to optimize the bonding processes. The results of the study are reported in this paper.

A novel tin electrodeposition chemistry and process has been developed at Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, New Jersey, USA. This process produces smooth, satin bright tin deposits which have stable, large grain structures. The deposits contain very low organic content and, as a consequence, exhibit excellent ductility, solderability and reflowability. The chemistry is capable of operating at elevated temperatures over a wide range of current densities, and is, thus, applicable to rack, barrel and reel‐to‐reel operations. All chemical components, including breakdown products are fully analyzable with conventional analytical methods. Extensive bath life studies show that the deposit appearance and material properties, including grain structures, are stable in relation to the age of the electroplating chemistry. In addition, the grain refiners used are highly stable, and have few breakdown products as the chemistry ages. All these features imply a robust process which has been confirmed in various manufacturing environments. This tin electroplating process has been utilized in plating coatings for connectors, solder bumps, PWBs and components for semiconductor applications.

To provide information about latest product developments to address and take away the fear of whisker formation on pure immersion tin surface finishes on PCBs.

This paper summarises the latest findings on whisker formation of pure tin surface finishes and describes an effective methodology for whisker suppression in combination with other benefits for the use of this new immersion tin generation.

Whisker formation is a typical feature of pure tin when coated, e.g. on copper and is a threat to the PCB industry, because of the risks of shortcuts involved. The main driving force for whiskers is an accumulation of internal stress created by diffusion at the boundary of copper and tin. A nano layer deposited from an organic metal‐based pre‐dip significantly reduces the diffusion by creating a unique sandwich layer with smooth concentration gradients. A drastic reduction of diffusion and stress was found, eliminating the driving force for whisker formation and prolonging the layer's shelf life and temperature stability at the same time.

Whenever whisker formation on immersion tin is regarded as a potential risk, e.g. by OEMs, a whisker‐reduced process is available and should be chosen to meet the market's specifications.

This paper takes the edge off the whisker threat discussions, leading to a hesitant implementation of immersion tin surface finish technology for PCBs, which disregard its excellent features with respect to future lead‐free soldering. Whisker‐reduced immersion tin is a viable and preferable alternative solderable surface finish for the lead‐free era.

There has been a significant increase in flooding in the UK over the past ten years. During this time, Government policy has moved from investment in flood defences towards encouraging property owners to take responsibility for reducing the impact of flooding. One of the ways in which this can be achieved is for homeowners to adapt their properties to flood risk by implementing property level flood risk adaptation (PLFRA) measures. While there has been some attempt to develop an understanding of the benefits of such measures, these previous studies have their limitations in that the intangible benefits have not been fully considered. As such, there remains a need for further development of these studies towards developing a more comprehensive understanding of PLFRA measures. It is against this background the purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual cost benefit analysis (CBA) framework for PLFRA measure. This framework brings together the key parameters of the costs and benefits of adapting properties to flood risk including the intangible benefits, which have so far been overlooked in previous studies.

A critical review of the standard methods and existing CBA models of PLFRA measures was undertaken. A synthesis of this literature and the literature on the nature of flooding and measures to reduce and eliminate their impacts provides the basis for the development of a conceptual framework of the costs and benefits of PLFRA measures. Within the developed framework, particular emphasis is placed on the intangible impacts, as these have largely been excluded from previous studies in the domain of PLFRA measures.

The framework provides a systematic way of assessing the costs and benefits of PLFRA measures. A unique feature of the framework is the inclusion of intangible impacts, such as anxiety and ill health, which are known to be difficult to measure. The study proposes to implement one of the stated preference methods (SPM) of valuation to measure these impacts, known as the willingness to pay method, as part of a survey of homeowners. The inclusion of these intangible impacts provides the potential to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the benefit cost ratio (BCR) for different stakeholders. The newly developed CBA conceptual framework includes four principal components: the tangible benefits to insurers; the tangible benefits to the government; the tangible benefits to homeowners; and the intangible benefits to homeowners.

This tool offers the potential to support government policy concerned with increasing the uptake of PLFRA measures through increasing the information available to homeowners and thereby supporting the decision-making process.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the research into prevalence of acquired brain injury in non-ABI specialist services, the impact of the invisible aspects of executive impairment and loss of insight upon functioning and to question how this is assessed and managed by generalist services.

A literature search was undertaken to identify where people with an ABI may come in to contact with services that are not specifically designed to meet their needs.

ABI is prevalent amongst users of a variety of community, inpatient and criminal justice services. The common albeit invisible consequences of ABI complicate assessment, service use and or treatment particularly in the context of a lack of under pinning knowledge and experience amongst the staff in non-specialist ABI services. As a consequence risks to children and adults are increased, opportunities for rehabilitation and growth are lost and human potential squandered. Addressing the first stage in this process, developing knowledge of the consequences of ABI and how to assess need, is a pre-requisite for change.

An absence of basic underlying knowledge of the consequences of ABI impacts upon assessment and so limits the effectiveness of services. A consequence of this is manifest in the over-representation of people with an ABI to be found in non-specialist settings.

–Little research is undertaken from a social and community perspective into the impact of ABI over the longer term for those who have no contact with specialist services and yet, quite clearly by their use of other services, have unidentified, unrecognised and un-responded to needs.

Recently, the focus of UK and European flood risk management policy has been towards promoting the uptake of property level flood adaptation measures. Despite this focus, the take‐up of property level flood adaptation measures (both resilient and resistant) remains very low. One of the apparent barriers to uptake is the cost of installing such measures. This study aims to investigate the cost of adopting resilient reinstatement measures by considering a small number of actual properties that were flooded in Cockermouth during 2009.

Secondary data obtained from a loss adjusting company provides the basis for analysis. The data take into consideration the cost benefit of resilient repair, assuming the same properties were flooded again. The traditional reinstatement costs were established as the actual cost of putting the properties back in a like‐for‐like manner while resilient reinstatement costs were established by creating new resilient repair schedules based on recommended good practice.

The results of the study show that the percentage extra cost for resilient reinstatement over traditional repair cost ranged from 23 to 58 per cent with a mean of 34 per cent depending on the house type. However, while resilient repairs were found to be more expensive than traditional (i.e. like‐for‐like) methods, they were found to significantly reduce the repair costs assuming a subsequent flood were to take place. Resilient flood mitigation measures seem most promising and, given repeat flooding, will help in limiting the cost of repairs up to as much as 73 per cent for properties with a 20 per cent annual chance of flooding, which indicates that the up‐front investment would be recovered following a single subsequent flood event.

The uptake of resilient reinstatement among the floodplain property owners in the UK is very low and one of the reasons for the low uptake is lack of understanding of the cost and benefit of adopting such measures. While there have been previous studies towards investigating the costs of resilient reinstatement, it is believed that this is the first to use real claims data and information to analyse the tangible costs/benefits of resilient reinstatement.

The purpose of this paper is to review the dimensions of service quality used in different countries across the world, especially in the higher education sector.

Content analysis is used to get a comprehensive insight of the studies accumulated from some of the selected databases such as Emerald Insight, Ebsco ABI/inform, etc. All these studies are related to the measuring of service quality in higher education.

The result of this paper reveals that SERVQUAL is the most widely accepted scale which has its dominance in the higher education setting. The paper focuses on revealing the dimensions which are used in the past studies. The paper notices a huge variation in the items as well as constructs while exploring the dimensions. Further, it is observed that many of the studies considered in this paper picked dimensions from other studies, expert opinions and factor analysis. In addition to this, it is found that different scales are proposed and checked for their reliability and validity through the confirmatory factor analysis. Few studies confirm the validity using average variance extracted (AVE), model fit values and correlations.

The study will help other researchers to get a summarised form of different dimensions used in the higher education setting. It also points out the essential and common dimensions of similar studies. Further, with different samples and geographical location, it can help us to identify how the dimension varies as we move from one part to another around the globe with different samples. Further, it formulates directions to pick correct combination of scale, administration and methods that are useful in collecting the data and getting the inference out of it under correct settings.

The summarisation of different studies will help the researchers to have a holistic view of the important studies that took place in the higher education setting.

The city of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, has become an urban laboratory where numerous nationally prescribed regeneration partnerships and strategies have been “tried‐out” over the last 30 years. This paper unpacks the different and often contradictory spatial scales that such responses have taken, be they area‐based or city‐wide, as well as how “ways of doing” regeneration have been subsequently recast by this range of new partnerships, structures and processes. These developments have subsequently transformed the linkages between both central government and localities, and between local authorities and citizens, especially with regard to issues of trust‐based relationships. This paper will exemplify these changes by highlighting how the Government's flagship community‐centred regeneration partnership collided with an ambitious and far‐reaching local authority‐led city‐wide regeneration strategy. This paper concludes by discussing and how this has implications for managing regeneration partnerships per se in the current urban policy context.

In today’s hypercompetitive, digital-first, knowledge-based economy, organizational creativity has never been more important as a potential source of competitive advantage. The foundation stone for every innovation is an idea and all ideas are born of creativity. The innovation process thus starts with creativity and the new ideas it yields are ideally based on insights that will lead ultimately to novel outcomes (such as new products, services, experiences or business models) and thereby to a sustainable competitive advantage. In established businesses, until relatively recently, creativity was called on only for specific, often high-profile occasions, for ‘hackathons’ or for major ‘innovation jams’, but today it is an essential, everyday necessity of routine work. However, attaining the right level of creativity from within is a challenge for many organizations and so they need to establish an appropriate and effective way to import it into their teams, projects and, ultimately, culture. The arts are a pure, unadulterated form of creativity. Mindsets, processes and practices from the arts can give organizational creativity a significant boost and can potentially offset the creative deficit in an organization. Here, the illustrative cases and practices that demonstrate how the arts can have a positive impact on business are examined.